Infographic: Optimizing Your Site for Voice Search

Voice-enabled tech is not something that is new. IBM’s Shoebox was the first version of this tech to be released, and that was back in 1961. It was quite an achievement at the time, but, with it only being able to understand 16 words and digits, it would never pass muster today.

The tech has been around for quite some time, but there was a problem getting it to understand natural human speech. Since then, artificial intelligence has progressed to a level that understanding even those with different accents is possible now.

As estimated more than 300 million people now use voice search on a daily basis. It has progressed to such a level that SEO experts recommend optimizing the content on your site for voice searches. In a nutshell, that means using natural language when creating your content.

Or, like we have been told for a few years now, write for people, not machines. But, with optimizing for voice search, we have to take that additional step. We have to start using the same kind of language that our target audience does.

That means incorporating some of the slang that they may use and adopting a more informal style of writing. Is the age of the grammar Nazis over? Not quite yet. Grammatically, our languages are evolving. Many conventions that were previously non-negotiable have started being relaxed. For example, it is, strictly speaking, grammatically incorrect to use a conjunction like “and” or “but” to start a sentence. This is a convention that is being relaxed now. Another example is the Oxford comma where a comma is placed before the “and” in a list sentence. It is now considered a little old-fashioned.

As time goes on, we can expect more conventions to change, as our speech patterns change. Language is constantly evolving. Take the English language, for example. The English used during Elizabethan times was very different to what we use today.

Basic grammar rules do still apply though, and it is important to abide by them when creating content. Making too many errors in terms of grammar and spelling could hurt the site’s credibility and create a bad impression on readers.

Rather go for a happy medium – language that is grammatically correct, but more informal as well.

Check out the below Infrographic which is brought by SEO Tribunal.